Rural gentrification and networks of capital accumulation—A case study of Jackson, Wyoming

A spatial reorganization of agriculture has been underway throughout the 20th century, and this reorganization has accelerated in the context of neoliberal trade arrangements such as NAFTA and the European Union. Global production networks now characterize today’s agricultural industry resulting in devalorized rural production spaces in specific locales. At the same time, surplus capital accumulated in contemporary global cities and regional urban centers continuously seeks out new spaces for investment in potentially profitable rent gaps. These parallel forces stimulate the re-purposing of rural industrial spaces from agricultural to residential uses in much the same way as occurred in former manufacturing neighborhoods in many urban centers. Using Jackson, Wyoming as a case study, this paper illustrates these processes through a framework based largely on theorizations of gentrification in urban contexts. In doing so, the case study brings supply side explanations of gentrification more explicitly into the United States’ rural gentrification literature and further highlights how contemporary processes of rural gentrification represent new geographies of capital accumulation. The Jackson case study further demonstrates the ways in which these flows of capital produce rural space in a relational sense by linking the local rural to the national and global through complex networks of capital investment operating at multiple scales.